It's a Gandy tie inserter/tie extractor. I forget who made them but IIRC, they were produced in the 1950's as a "one man gandy dancer". Frequently used at industrial plants. Your's is missing the Briggs & Stratton gas engine, 12HP IIRC. The engine powered both the line on the boom and propelled the machine down the tracks, very s l o w l y....with a cone drive rubbing against a double-faced pulley. Push the cone one way to go forward, the opposite way to go reverse. The operation was fairly simple: Center the boom over the tie you want to change out, attach the rail clamps to keep the machine from tipping over, dig out the end of the tie and loosen up the crib around the tie, there was a tie clamp that grabbed the end of the tie, swing out the boom and lower the boom to the horizontal, attach the cable and, in theory, yank out the tie. To insert the new tie, dig out the other end of the crib and run the cable under the rails and attach the tie clamp to the new tie and drag it through under the rails. Works good on paper, field experience is slightly different. If your ballast is clean, the ties in decent shape, and the operator skilled, it probabaly worked pretty well. Otherwise, well, you could spend all day to change one tie (perhaps some guys wanted that!)
NJ Zinc in Palmerton, PA had a number of them, all beat up.
Rob
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